Gotta love America, where Walmart has made the choice to not advertise violent video games because of mass shootings, but where you can walk to the outdoor section of the store and buy a gun!
If you’ve never been in a Walmart, let me set the scene for you: Imagine a giant open area, produce on your left or right and the cashiers on the other side. As you’re walking, the food shifts into hygiene products and then televisions. You’re walking, exploring the store that will no longer tell you about their video games, but then you get to the camping gear and bikes. There, as you’re looking, you spot all the guns you can purchase while eating your fried chicken (that is, if this is a Super Walmart).
Sounds absolutely wild, and something you’d see in a movie, but not in rural Kansas, right? Wrong! It’s literally the set up of all Walmart locations. You can buy a gun, in a Walmart.
Following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, the rhetoric from the right hasn’t been that we need stricter gun laws. Instead, it’s about how violent video games and movies are the reason these things happen—you know, video games force you to go out and get an easily accessible gun and use it in a mass murder spree, but there’s no problem with guns being that easy to just obtain.
Speaking with USA Today, Walmart put out a statement on their new “video game advertising” policy for the time being.
“We’ve taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and this action does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment.”
A couple of things to note here: It isn’t a permanent policy, but more importantly, they’re taking down video game ads but not pointing out that they are part of the problem since they literally sell guns that can be delivered to your home for next day delivery.
I decided to Google and found out that you can order a gun for delivery from Walmart. Can’t wait for Big Brother to question me on why I googled if a specific kind of gun can kill someone, but it’s for the purpose of showing that you can just … order guns to be delivered to your home. (To be fair, it’s a pellet gun, but guess what? Those can also kill people!)
To me, this just feels like a push to put blame on anything except what we should be putting blame on. Sure, there’s a human being behind the gun, but more importantly, they’ve obtained a gun and are using it to carry out an act. That isn’t the fault of video games; it’s the fault of a lack of communication about mental health and the fact that you can LITERALLY ORDER A GUN FROM WALMART.COM.
(via The Hill, image: NBC)
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